Patrick, SC
Patrick wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Patrick at the 80th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 283 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Patrick at the 80th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Patrick's buildings actually sit
54.4% of Patrick's 283 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 154 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 45.6% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Patrick compares
Patrick scores 80th nationally and 84th within South Carolina — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Patrick ranks 6,312 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,105 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 77 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Patrick's 80th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Patrick
With 54.4% of Patrick in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Patrick's 80th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Patrick, see the exposure-zones guide.